The Kupiansk infowar

Psyops vs real ops. The Russian view. Bakhmut - Krynky - Kursk... Kupiansk? Gerasimov - Prigozhin?

Two days ago, the Guardian put out an article with a title and topic quite germane to our focus today:

What is this political front, you may ask?

One hope for Kyiv is that Russia will somehow break over the next two years, although there are few immediate signs of resistance within the country after the failure of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march towards Moscow.

Prigozhin’s march was justified by the supposed complacency of Russian high command in conducting the war. What foundation does Kiev have today for a repeat of this scenario?

Over the past few weeks, Ukraine has been making much of its reversal of Russian advances in the city of Kupyansk. Last week, we covered Ukrainian accounts of the Kupyansk operation. Today, we’ll examine broader motivations behind Ukraine’s Kupiansk counter-offensive.

Given that much of Ukraine’s strategy lies in the attempt to kickstart political unrest inside Russia, today we’ll also focus on how Russian military bloggers have covered the situation in Kupyansk over the past few days.

Finally, we’ll examine theories that Ukraine’s Kupyansk operation lies within a long tradition of strategically pointless but informationally destabilizing military operations — Belgorod and Bakhmut 2023, Krynky 2023-24, Kursk 2024-25, and now Kupiansk. The aim is not so much to achieve strategically significant military victories, but to encourage another Prigozhin-style mutiny. Though this is extremely unlikely, the approach is clear, and reeks of the psyops so appreciated by London’s postmodern war-planners.

Motivations

Popular enthusiasm for the war is at an all time low.

Ukrainian military telegrams often hold fundraisers for frontline units. Given the meagre capacities of the government, this is highly important for many units. However, citizens have been increasingly unwilling to donate. These complaints today from military analyst Bohdan Myroshnykov are just one of many:

Given this declining morale, big Ukrainian military telegrams like that run by Stanislav Buniatov of the Aidar battalion recognize the importance of publicizing what few victories do take place. Kupiansk has been ‘like a breath of fresh air’.

I remember the euphoria in Ukrainian media and society at the time of the Kursk operation back in 2024, as well. Of course, we all know how that turned out.

The situation in Kupiansk

Retaking significant sections of the city of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv oblast has been Ukraine’s most significant military victory in several months.

Commander-in-chief of the army Oleksandr Syrsky claimed on December 17 that 90% of the city is under Ukrainian control. I gave a more detailed look at how Ukrainian military bloggers described operations there in this recent post.

Before we get into a more detailed analysis of Kupiansk, let’s first examine a map. This is from Ukraine’s DeepState resource. I am using it to indicate Ukrainian claims of territorial control, but more importantly to give an idea of what the area looks like. Blue shows Russian positions recently retaken by Ukraine. Red is Russian positions. The grey zone shows contested territory. I drew the crucial river Oskil in red to make it more visible.

The map should show why it is not particularly surprising Russia has suffered setbacks in Kupyansk.

Russia’s advances elsewhere on the frontlines, like at Pokrovsk, occurred through outflanking Ukrainian positions. The following DeepState map shows the current situation around Pokrovsk, with the caveat that it is likely an underestimate of Russian gains (more on Pokrovsk tomorrow).

But the situation in Pokrovsk was very different. Russia’s control over the city was itself a deep salient, vulnerable on its flanks from Ukrainian counter-attacks.

Apart from that, the river Oskil is particularly important. Russian positions remaining in Kupyansk are forced to resupply across the river, further complicating their situation. As we will soon soo, Russian sources complain about this logistical problem at length.

Let’s now examine the situation in more detail.

Popular Russian military analyst Rybar covered Kupyansk on December 24, blaming false reports by Russian generals of Kupyansk’s fall. This is also a common complaint from Ukrainian officers about their own generals, as I cover just about every week.

And like the Ukrainians facing Russian advances, Ukrainian advances deeper into Kupyansk are being held back by Russian drone operators. Here’s Rybar:

Here is Rybar’s handy English-language map in order to make sense of the settlements about to be mentioned.

Keep in mind that Rybar’s English-language map uses Ukrainian naming conventions, instead of the Russian names that you will see in the Rybar telegram posts I translated. This means that if a Russian name ends in ‘ovka’, you will see it on the map as ‘ivka’. Radkovka = Radkivka. ‘oye’ becomes ‘e. Sadovoye = Sodove. The conversion isn’t hard to figure out.

Now, back to Rybar’s post.

In a now deleted series of posts, the Russian soldier Anatoly Radov wrote on the 24th of Kupyansk’s loss. The term he used in Russian, ‘proeban’, means something like ‘fucking lost’, not ‘fucked up’:

Many Ukrainian telegrams reposted Radov with relish. On the 25th, Radov tried to strike a more optimistic tone:

But later on the 25th, Radov wrote an interesting series of posts about how the Ukrainians have successfully copied Russian tactics, advancing in small groups of two or so men under cover of fog. Though some are killed by drones (‘fipikha’ or ‘birds’), a number break through and dig in:

Radov is a fairly small telegram, with only about 30,000 subscribers. However, heavy hitters from Russia’s patriotic military blogger community have also been sounding the alarm about Kupyansk.